Design for an Empathic World: Reconnecting People, Nature, and Self.  Sim Van der Ryn and Edwin Rutsch

Van der Ryn advocates for a movement towards “empathic design,” in which a designer not only works in concert with nature, but with an understanding of and empathy for the end user and for ones self. He stresses the need for all three connections in order to design for a more human, equitable, and resilient future.

 

Sim Van der Ryn has been a teacher, writer, researcher, and practitioner of design for forty years. A leading authority on ecologically sustainable architecture and design, he is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1961.